Students at Weymouth High and other local schools get the ocean-science drift

Erin Tiernan The Patriot Ledger @ErinTiernan

Thursday

Dec 17, 2015 at 10:21 PMDec 17, 2015 at 10:30 PM

WEYMOUTH -- Since October, John Byrne’s earth science class at Weymouth High School has been been something of an ocean science research office.

Thanks to a homemade device called an ocean drifter, Byrne’s students have been able to track and analyze ocean currents. The drifter is made of PVC piping and outfitted with a sail and a GPS transmitter. The students launched it off the coast Oct. 6.

Four other middle and high school classes on the South Shore are involved in the program, which is sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service. The students are helping advance ocean science without ever leaving the classroom.

The program has students doing scientific research, and it helps scientists obtain data about ocean currents at a low cost.

To pay for the materials, NOAA typically seeks grants. This fall, the Battelle ocean research facility in Norwell enabled students from Weymouth, Rockland, Hanover, Hull and Plymouth to participate in the program by covering the cost of materials.

“This project teaches them a combination of 21st-century skills – strategizing, problem solving, research, collaboration, using technology, and written and oral communication,” Byrne said of his Weymouth students.

Unless damaged, an ocean drifter is capable of transmitting a signal for up to 400 days. Every day, Byrne’s students track data from their drifter and make predictions about where the drifters are headed and what variables could affect their courses.

“I thought it has been cool to see how currents work,” said Zack Whitman, 17, a Weymouth High senior.

James Manning, a NOAA oceanographer, first involved students in the ocean drifter project in 2002, after realizing that relatively inexpensive drifters could be made with materials from Home Depot. The typical drifter costs $700 to $900 to build, he said.

Manning saw two benefits: expanding his research potential and getting students involved in scientific research.

“Funding is half of our effort,” he said. “Half of the time we spend as scientists is coming up with funding to do what we need to do and scrounging around wherever we can. Funding is tight, but education is coming up with a little money there through foundations, local corporations and nonprofits. It’s a real challenge to get funding. These instruments don’t cost too much, but it does take people’s time to digest the data and make sense of it.”

Every day, the drifters collect longitudinal and latitudinal data and transmit it back to the NOAA scientists and students so that they can track surface currents. The information helps scientists better predict weather patterns and where pollutants might be going or coming from. It even helps them better track marine animal populations.

“The things they (students) are collecting are valuable,” Manning said. “We use it in a variety of ways.”

At Rockland High School, 20 students involved in an after-school environmental club have been tracking their drifter for the past two months.

“It’s different from our other projects because instead of having a direct benefit to our school here, it impacts on a larger scale,” said club president Ronan McNally.

In the past, the club, which was reinstated last year, has spearheaded recycling and gardening initiatives at the high school.

Manning, the NOAA scientist, said, “The environment is changing in very subtle ways and to certain degrees in some places. We need to have data from many different places and depths to make sense of it and to validate our numerical models. It helps us understand things.”

He hopes the project can inspire the next generation of scientists to continue his studying of how climate change is affecting the oceans.

“This field of physical oceanography and numerical modeling, it needs recruits, and we don’t have many students,” Manning said. “A lot of students are certainly interested in marine biology and other aspects of oceanography, but a lot of high schoolers don’t know that other disciplines exist.”

One of the Hanover students involved in the project, Gus Levin, 13, said, “It’s a cool experience to think something you’re doing for a little bit could affect the way scientists study and learn about the ocean for a long time.”

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